A qualitative analysis of life course adjustment to multiple morbidity and disability.

The accumulation of limitations over the life course requires that women readapt to environmental barriers they encounter over time. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to detail the life experiences associated with living with mobility, cognitive, and sensory loss experienced by a woman and her sister who participated in an ongoing ethnographic study of mobility impairment in women. In-depth interviews were subjected to thematic, life course analysis. A family case study was interpreted as an exemplar for aging with early-onset disability into multiple morbidity, which was described as a series of loss, recovery, and reengagement. Within the case study, the participant suggested that because her functional limitations were not accommodated earlier in life due to societal and family-level disadvantage, these limitations were more difficult to adjust to in later years.